Young people are the future

In this context early school leaving is a major issue and a threat to social and economic cohesion. AER members regions have been working on this topic via the working group on school dropouts. In this context the JET-CD project held its final conference on 21-22 June in Hampshire. 27 participants from the partner organisations and from different organisations from the region attended the event.

Early school leaving: long term impacts

Early school leaving (ESL) is predictive of a range of economic and social outcomes. Early leavers experience considerable disadvantages in relation to adult-life chances: higher rates of unemployment, poorer health status…

The consortium pinpointed the different good practices in each region and shared challenges. Despite very different contexts, commonalities were identified both in terms of causes and in terms of processes. The project particularly highlighted the need for cross-sectoral collaboration.

Prevention

The final conference was an opportunity to present good practices implemented in the different regions. For instance in Catalunya, the Adapted Curriculum Programme allows to prevent the dropout of young people. It is implemented in partnership with El Llindar, a second chance school, which provides prevocational training courses and personal guiding.

In Tulcea, AMN Insight is an online evaluation platform, which provides specialists support to prevent dropouts as well as educational and vocational guidance to students on the basis of psycho-pedagogical testing.

Intervention & Compensation

Within the category “intervention” the project sought to collect good practices aimed at detecting and re-motivating early school-leavers for education. The region of Västernorrland and Hampshire presented their experience and good practices which involve actions led by diverse stakeholders such as social services, youth counselling and the employment agency. Health receives major attention in Västernorrland in particular. In Hampshire cross-sectoral collaboration, tenders specifying the importance of social value and jobs for young people, and a focus on data rich analysis prove extremely successful: the level of NEET was reduced by 1000 individuals in 3 years. The category “compensation” included good practices aimed at re-entering early school leavers in the education system. The region of Østfold stressed the need to have a early intervention, an individual plan and close follow-up. It is essential to focus on the needs of students and not on what they have failed at!